Tag Archives: power

Generator Day

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Today was Generator Day. Interestingly, it is also apparently Generator Day in a large part of the southeast US.

The purpose of Generator Day is to, periodically, run the generator under load for an hour or so in order to make sure everything functions and doesn’t get stagnant or stale. Usually I fire up the EU2000, plug in an electric leaf blower, and do some yardwork.

It’s been a while since I started this thing up. (Bad survivalist!) I had actually forgotten the startup procedure. Fortunately, part of my generator prep plan includes copying the startup/shutdown instructions from the .pdf, printing them out, putting them in a sealed page protector, and attaching them to the generator. As a result, I quickly had my memory refreshed. Started on pull #9.

This is, I believe, year nine for this particular EU2000. According to the run meter I put on this thing when I bought it, I’ve run it for about a total of 30 hours. Thats some pretty low miles.

The EU2000, when I purchased it, was the big thing in portable generators. Since then, upgraded versions have come out and when I get another spare or two, I’ll get the upgraded version. But, so far, for nine years this thing has been sitting quietly in it’s Hardigg case awaiting the infrequent power outage. Been quite pleased with it so far.

Of course, no man is an island and not piece of expensive gear is without support materials. The Hardigg case that houses the generator also contains a cable lock, spare air filters, printed directions, heavy duty extension cords, spare fuel cans, PRI-G, etc, etc.

In the nine years I’ve had this thing I’ve only needed to genuinely use it twice. Both times for only a few hours. And both times I felt pretty darn smug as I sat there with cable and internet as my neighbors suddenly became involuntary Luddites.

So, if you haven’t gotten one yet….thumbs up on the Honda EU series.

Black Start

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An article from Yahoo about a state-sponsored data breach that may have handed over some interesting info to the Chinese/Russians.

“For example, it’s reportedly possible the hackers accessed Black Start, the detailed technical blueprints for how the U.S. would restore power if there was a major blackout. If that was indeed the case, Russia would theoretically have a list of systems it could target to keep power from turning back on.”

A government plan for restarting power generation? Interesting. Makes sense when you think about it…but I’d never thought about it before. Shades of “One Second After“. (WOrth reading, btw.)

As the saying goes, “it takes money to make money”. Apparently the same is true, to some degree, in power generation. As I read it, previous plans for restarting an offline power plant assume you’ll be able to have power from elsewhere where the grid is up. But, if the entire grid is down…well…you can’t start up your power plant if you can’t even turn on the lights in the control room.

The solution, it seems, is to either have enough capacity in your onsite generators to get the plant up and running, or get your electricity from a source that will continue to provide..such as hydropower.

What I find interesting here is that .gov had a planned response in place for a grid-down power plant restart procedure..and now that the playbook for that has fallen into enemy (and make no mistake about it, thats what the Chinese are) hands they know how to create that grid-down situation and disable our ability to get past it. All in all, to my unstrategic way of thinking, that seems to have just made the possibility of an attack of some kind on the national power system more likely.

Very cursory googling shows that apparently the current plan (or one of them) is RADICS.. Apparently the .gov has, in the last two years, stepped up it’s research into preparing against cyberattacks that target energy infrastructure. Interesting, that.

Remember the old days when targeting a nations energy infrastructure involved a B-52 instead of a laptop?

 

 

Checking batteries

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As the year comes to a close, I’m wandering around the house checking batteries in various devices. About a year ago I had a MagLite self-destruct when the batteries crapped out. The usual scenario….flashlight doesn’t work, you unscrew the tailcap, and when you finally get it open the guts of the thing are full of the corroded guts of a battery. Freakin’ hate that.

So, I decided I’d keep a list of what devices I kept around in a state of readiness with batteries already in them, and I would periodically inspect those devices so that if the batteries started to go Tango Uniform I might catch them before the device was irrevocably damaged. As it turned out, thus far, no batteries have gone south this year. BUT….that doesn’t mean they won’t and it doesn’t mean that periodic inspections are a bad idea.

So, I’ll update the little sticker I have on the devices to reflect the periodic inspection and tuck the devices away in their usual spots.

My experience has been that I have had absolutely no problems with lithium batteries. I’ve yet to have one leak and ruin a device…for what those stupid things cost, I should hope they’d be more stable than the current crop of Duracells. It’s at the point where, for mission critical or expensive devices, I won’t use anything but lithiums. I’d rather ten bucks for a pack of lithium batteries than $175 for a new GPS unit, y’know?

So, while your swapping batteries for all the kids toys this holiday season go check your own toys and make sure the batteries didn’t crap the bed.

Lighting

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Last week I plugged in the 12v desk lamp into the rehabbed Goal 0 battery to see how long it would run. Well, today is about a week since then and the little battery meter says it’s down to approximately 40% charge.

So, seven days at 24 hour usage means I could run this thing for six hours every night for a month. Or eight hours a night for three weeks. Thats a not inconsiderable amount of time to have ‘normal’ lighting.

Sometimes it’s hard to wrap your head around something like an economic collapse, a gigantic earthquake, a global pandemic, etc, but pretty much everyone can relate to a blackout or loss of electricity because we’ve all experienced it before at some point in our lives.  A power failure is probably the ‘disaster’ that the majority of people can relate to. Not everyone thinks keeping a case of 5.56 and years worth of freeze drieds is a good idea, but pretty much everyone has a flashlight at home.

Anyway, as I mentioned in the previous post on the subject, I like keeping a couple battery-in-a-box type of items on hand so that I can just set up a light source and pretty much not have to worry about it. I’ve yet to experience the outage that lasts more than a day and at the moment I have the resources to not have to sit in the dark for an entire month.

Gotta say, man….Ii remember when LED lighting started to be a thing. I recall thinking that if it delivered the lighting they promised at the low-usage rates they calculated it would revolutionize emergency lighting and low-power lighting systems for remote locations. Apparently it lived up to the hype.

Goal 0 Extreme 350

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I have a couple ‘battery in a box’ setups around the house. I have an ancient (pre-Y2K) ConSci powerpack that has, rather unbelievably, held up for the last twenty years. And, as of late, I picked up a battery jumpbox that ran an LED desk lamp for a week. That told me that as far as emergency lighting needs go: a) anything other than LED’s is a remarkably foolish choice and b) assuming six hours of use per night, I can light the house up for a month with a lamp and a charged battery. So, the logical conclusion was to get a couple lamps,a couple batteries, and keep them charged. This I have done.

Now, the emergency lights I use are from Goal 0. I have fabbed up my own in the past, and I’ll probably do that again, but Goal 0 had some nice, simple, daisy chainable lights. Goal 0 also makes various battery packs. I was gifted a dead one last week, along with a Goal 0 panel to charge it. And thus begins our tale.

So I was generously given a Goal Zero Extreme 350…a discontinued batterybox type of product. It featured Anderson power pole connectors, charging regulator, charging input, fuses, and a battery meter. Really, you could put together the exact same thing for less than what Goal 0 charges but some of us are not terribly handy with tools and prefer an out-of-the-box turnkey solution.

Anyway, this thing had sat in storage and was deader than Hillary Clintons presidential chances. I let it sit on the supplied charger for a couple days and got no joy at all. Clearly the long period of non-use, and slow discharge (because the battery meter is on all the time), led to the sealed lead-acid battery becoming unrecoverable.

But..I liked the other features. Perhaps Goal 0 has a replacement for this battery? Nope. And the replacement batteries they do sell are $$$. So….off to the itnernet. Which is where I found this – directions on DIYing a replacement battery off Amazon. Since my basis was $0 in this, I didn’t mind dropping the coin for a new AGM battery to replace the dead SLA battery. So, ran off to Amazon and ordered up the suggested battery which was an exact dimensional fit, gives me the advantage of AGM, and was an extra 5 amp/hour. Followed the instructions and – voila – brought it back to life. I’ve got my desk lamp hooked up to it to see how long it’ll run on a full charge, and then to see how long it takes to charge it using the panel. I’e no doubt this thing willrun the lamp for at least three or four days…and probably longer. It’ll give me one more self-contained lighting unit to distribute where needed next time the power goes out. And the price was right.

Generator day

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Rather nice day out there today. Good day to crack open the Hardigg case where I store the EU2000 and make today into Generator Day.

I’ve had the Eu2000 for about five or so years now and I have been quite pleased with it. There have been a fw short-term outages where I’ve had to run it for a few hours and I’ve been very pleased with it. I have no real need to run the entire house, rather my needs are extremely simple..keep the freezers freezing, and the router routing. Thats pretty much it. Heating is taken care of with the kerosene heaters, lighting is taken care of with the Goal0 lights and some AGM batteries, and everything else is mostly a non-critical system.

Although the EU2000 has been a reliable piece of gear, I will probably at some point get a second one. There’s a lot of piece of mind to not having all my eggs in one basket and the two generators can be daisychained to provide higher output should the need arise.

When I got mine, I think they were on sale for about a grand. They’re a bit more nowdays but still, in my opinion, a very good purchase. If you decide to get one, don’t forget all the ancillary gear that goes with them..air filters, oil, gas can, fuel funnel, heavy-duty extension cords, cable lock, etc, etc.

More LED lighting experimenting

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So, if you recall, late last year I had a post up about picking up one of those handy-dandy battery jump-packs at CostCo. They’re a fairly simple, though not perfect, solution for people who are just not inclined, mechanically or motivationally, to whip up their own battery-in-a-box.

After that, I got the curious interest of wondering how long my converted DC LED desk lamp would run on the jump-pack before failing. (The short answer was at least a week 24/7, which, at 6 hours per evening comes out to a freakin’ month of light. Probably more…I quit the program after a week figuring I had enough info.)

It was, to me, a very useful experiment and showed the potential for some tremendous utility from those devices in case of emergency. But…it’s very localized lighting. Its a desk lamp, after all. Which means it’s ‘area of effect’ in terms of illumination isn’t very large. So…what if……….

Was up at CostCo and they have a 4′ LED shoplight that looks similar to the old-style fluorescent shop lights we’re all familiar with. Now, lets state right up front that these were not the really high output LED worklights that are avaialble…for $25 the box says you get about 4000 lumens. Ok, thats fine…what I’m after is the ability to light up a room in a manner that looks virtually identical to what it looks like when the power is on, and not like someone pulled the housing off a MagLight and set it up on a file cabinet in the corner.

Here’s the rub…its set up for AC current, which means that I have to plug it into the built-in inverter on the battery pack. Problem is, the LEDs are DC to begin with…. converting DC (battery) to AC(fixture) to DC (LEDs), as I understand it, isn’t as efficient as if it was just straight DC to begin with. Fortunately, the internet is not without a supply of posts and DIY from people who wanted to do exactly that…. so, I may dig out my snips and electrical tape and see what I can do. But, for now, I’m curious to see how long it’ll run off the battery pack.

I still have these guys sitting here and it would be interesting to put them together to form a self-contained emergency backup lighting system for the storage area where all the emergency gear is.

I have no illusion this thing will run as long as the desk lamp did, but that lamp ran over 168 hours…this thing, on the ther hand, ran for three. Three. I suspect that the actual runtime would be several orders of magnitude longer if it were DC-DC. So….some tinkering is in order.

Article – Can a Harbor Freight Generator Really Beat a Honda?

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Mmmmm…mags…mmmm
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Harbor Freight, a giant retailer of low-priced tools and power equipment, has been around since the 1970s. If you live near a Harbor Freight store, chances are you’ve received a circular comparing the Predator 62523 recreational inverter generator to the Honda EU2000iT1A1.

Given the big price difference—the Predator sells for $500 and the Honda for $1,000—are they comparable? Yes, according to Consumer Reports’ testing.

Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t. But for mission-critical gear I’ll spend a few extra bucks and have confidence (and perhaps better customer support) in my purchase.

Any generator is probably better than no generator, but I would choose the Honda. However, if all you can afford is a HiPoint Harbor Freight………

Minor upgrades

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I have a UPS for the computer so that if the power goes out, I can keep things going long enough to finish what I’m doing and shut things down. Most of us have those sorts of things. It occurred to me that I should probably get one for the security cameras as well. (Tangentially, if the power does go out, I switch from the energy-hog desktop to the the laptop…the laptop already has several hours of charge on it and can always be recharged off the generator. In a real pinch, I could use the phone for internetting and recharge it off a small panel or just about any battery.)

So, a trip to CostCo and I’m back with an uninterruptible power supply for the cameras. Realistically, it only has to keep the system going long enough for me to pull out the generator and get it running, but it’s nice to know it’ll run for a while on its own if the power goes out.

If want to be really paranoid, it’s nice to think that when the power gets cut and the hordes (or the SWAT team) are trying for the Big Sneak I’ll have a little bit of an advantage. Can’t get those sentry guns too soon. Although I suppose if youre crafty enough you can build your own.

There’s also a minor selfish motivation involved. (Well, a different motive anyway since self-preservation can be pretty selfish.) The intersection near my house has the somewhat regular car accident occur. I’ve one camera trained on the intersection so I can sell footage to the participants to substantiate their claims.

Some folks just Will Not Learn

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The world is populated by idiots.

Im in the bank this morning and the teller and the woman next to me are talking about the power outages that continue in many areas around here. This woman is saying how she hasn’t been able to charge her laptop, that she has no water (well pump), that she’s going to lose the food in her freezer, and how she hates being in the dark.

I gently steered the conversation to ask her if, when this is over, if it will change her behaviors and perhaps she’ll keep some battery-powered chargers around for her cell phone. “Oh, no..this almost never happens.”

You know, your house almost never burns down, you almost never have your car stolen, you almost never get cancer, and you almost never get disabled from your job….yet you have insurance in place for that, so why not this?

For these… clueless idiots…. it appears it truly is better to curse the darkness than buy generator.

My buddy on the other side of town is still without power after a transmission tower (not a power pole, mind you…a transmission tower) decided to go horizontal not far from him. Is he inconvenienced? Yes. He has no internet. Is he still in the game? Absolutely. He has not one but two of the Honda generators. He’s got his freezer, fridge, lights, cell phone charger, and all the other accoutrements of civilization up and running. And he has some stored gas on hand to keep it that way. As his neighbors live out the lifestyle of “Home & Garden: North Korea Edition”, my buddy drinks hot coffee, has lights, has communication, and can continue to run his business. (And also the means to keep it if someone decides his bit of civilization needs to become their bit of civilization.)

I still need to do some after action things… I need to top off the tank on the generator, get all the cords in one place, put some emergency lighting in that one place, log the run time for the generator, pick up some accessories for the extension cords, etc. But, all in all, the generator did the trick.

The EU2000 is too small to run the entire house, but Im thinking of picking one circuit in the house and seeing if I can’t have an electrician come in and set that one circuit up with a transfer switch. That way, I can have one room of the house with the outlets running. The alternative, which I’m also seriously considering, is an entirely new circuit throughout the house of emergency ‘red outlets’ that are completely independent of the house panel and would solely be connected to the generator.

The Honda EU2000 usually runs right around a grand. Worth it.